


Fun

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 10:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18809503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Zelda doesn’t want Hilda to have fun without her.





	Fun

Zelda’s been chain smoking on the front porch for two hours. 

Hilda knows this because she’s been doing outside activities for two hours, and Zelda has been sitting there staring at her the entire time.

At the breakfast table, Zelda had put down her newspaper and said very seriously,

“You haven’t been spending as much time at home lately.” Hilda had taken in the way Zelda was sitting—stern and reproachful. She’d said,

“Sorry, Dad. Are you going to give me a curfew? Take my car keys?” Zelda had scoffed.

“You don’t owe me an explanation. I just. Miss you.” And she’d left the table in a huff.

Hilda had felt bad about that. Perhaps she hadn’t need be so flip. But to her credit, she had expected to be expected to give an explanation.

But the fact remains, she hasn’t been spending as much time at home. It’s been a little stifling lately, and she has plenty of friends and hobbies in town, plenty of places to be other than in the middle of an argument between Zelda and Sabrina, plenty of things to do that aren’t being stared down by Zelda.

But now as she’s completing all these outdoor activities and being stared at, she’s wondering whether she hadn’t been right initially—whether Zelda is just waiting to amend her statement. “I miss you. Making the dinners I like.” Or “I miss you. Being here to rant to.” Surely, with that intense gaze, Zelda is not thinking nice things about missing chit chatting and doing puzzles and heckling human interest stories on NPR together and playing that game where they talk in each other’s accents and making fun of her for not being able to reach something in a top cabinet even as she’s helping retrieve it for her. Those are the things she misses about not being home as much. 

There are a lot of things she doesn’t miss, though, and this penetrating, focused, unreadable stare is one of them. It could precipitate her death. It could just go away after a while, be replaced by sleep or drunkenness and forgotten about the next day. It could draw her closer and closer and then be blinked away in apparent shame and embarrassment and never spoken of. 

Regardless, she’s disconcerted, and she doesn’t have any plans to be home more often. Even though, she admits to herself, she must’ve subconsciously taken the statement to heart, because there’s no great objective reason she should have decided to do all these activities on the same day Zelda had said she missed her. She could’ve spread them out over a few days and been brunching with one of her PTO pals right now. She rolls her eyes at herself and then wipes some sweat off her brow with a monogrammed handkerchief and watches Zelda watch her do it.

She’d begun her morning by cleaning up breakfast and then putting in a load of linens. After, she had gone straight out to weed the flowerbed. She had hardly been on her knees before Zelda had also slipped out the front door and slinked into a deck chair. Hilda hadn’t expected her to offer to help in the flower bed, especially with the dark look on her face. But Zelda usually makes herself useful in other ways. She’s not much for gardening or cooking or cleaning, but she’s typically not much for leisure when Hilda’s working. Zelda does paperwork, prepares bodies, makes phone calls, inputs figures into spreadsheets. She does things Hilda doesn’t like doing that still must be done as Hilda does things Zelda doesn’t like doing that still must be done. They’re a good team. They respect each other’s boundaries in that way.

But here Zelda is, staring, as she prunes the roses, trims back a tree threatening to slump onto a power line. Here is Zelda staring as she airs up the hearse’s tires and changes the oil. Here is Zelda staring as she hangs the linens on the clothesline.

She’s tired of watching that. She’s tired of catching glimpses of Zelda’s tense but reclining body. Zelda doesn’t even have a newspaper with her. Just her cigarette case and bejeweled butane lighter and a lot of ire emanating from her. It makes her feel as if Zelda had said she missed her to manipulate her into doing the necessary work that Zelda refuses to do herself. And in that moment, Hilda forgets the work Zelda does and that usually she feels respected and valued. In that moment, she feels used. She feels used and used up and angry.

Hilda stalks up the porch steps, stands right in front of Zelda with her hands on her hips, sweat prickling on her slightly sunburned brow and exposed chest, oil smudged on her nose. She says,

“And what in Satan’s name is all this? Your idea of a holiday is sitting here like a queen watching me perform all sorts of manual labor for your amusement?”

Zelda sits up straight, and her gaze doesn’t waver. She says,

“It’s not a holiday, and I’m not amused.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Hilda says, and she slams the door open and intends to dramatically stomp inside to take a shower, but there’s a hand on her elbow, and she turns. Zelda is standing now clutching tentatively and gently at her elbow, her eyes still focused but softer, pleading.

“You won’t interact with me. So I thought watching you might be the next best thing,” Zelda says. Hilda doesn’t have a ready retort, stands there just staring. Zelda continues, “I know what you’re doing when you’re not here. Obliquely anyway. You’re having fun. Because you’re a woman who needs that. But can’t I be fun?” Hilda wants to be sympathetic to her sister’s pain, but she’s got her own pain blurring her vision. She says tartly,

“I don’t know. Can you?” She regrets it as soon as she sees Zelda’s eyes well with tears. They stand very still and silent, Zelda’s hand at Hilda’s elbow. Zelda chokes back a sob, says in a warbly voice,

“Let me prove it. I can be fun.” They stare for another moment, and Zelda takes a full breath, rights herself, says firmly, “Get in the car.”

Hilda hesitates. She knows Zelda can be fun. It’s what she misses most about her—the accent game had been Zelda’s idea, after all. But Zelda trying to prove she can be fun. That could be dangerous. Hilda doesn’t know whether her definition of fun and Zelda’s will be compatible in this fraught context. 

Ultimately she gets in the car. It’s not the hearse but it might as well be for how solemn it is. Zelda has the top down on the black ‘94 LeBaron, and her hair is wild in the whipping wind. She usually has a scarf and the radio on at full volume. But today she has neither. Is this her attempt at fun?

Hilda fights a strand of hair from getting in her mouth and catching on her lipstick for at least a mile before she shouts over the loud rushing of air at 60 mph,

“Where are we going?”

Zelda doesn’t answer, and Hilda feels the car shift into a higher gear.

They finally stop in a clearing that isn’t exactly a parking lot on the lake. It’s a midday midweek, and it’s sunny and warm and unpopulated. Zelda doesn’t say a word, just gets out and heads toward the trunk. Hilda sits in the passenger seat, waiting, waiting for whatever will happen, waiting for an explanation. Zelda re-emerges swigging from a bottle of cheap sparkling wine. She hands it to Hilda over the door and then unclasps the closure at the back of her neck, begins sliding the dress down her shoulders. 

Hilda hadn’t felt like drinking, but she takes a swig to steady herself and then says,

“Um what are you doing?” Zelda smiles a forced-looking smile, says,

“It’s a perfect day for it.” She pushes her tight dress down and down, past her hips. It’s pooled on the ground now. She says, “I’m fun, Hildegard. And what’s more fun than convertible rides and skinny dipping?” Zelda slides out of her beige lace panties, extricates herself from the matching bra. 

Hilda is transfixed. She’s seen Zelda naked plenty of times in their room, in other rooms that were nevertheless theirs. But Zelda now is nude in a new, strange, outdoor location. And she’s become so to satisfy Hilda’s sense of adventure, to prove herself a worthy, adventurous partner. And it feels much more intimate, somehow. Zelda is gorgeous always, but now she is utterly breathtaking. Hilda chastises herself for her impure thoughts. Surely Zelda just wants to connect with her. Just wants her to come home.

But Zelda runs her hands over herself—fingertips brushing over alert nipples, skimming down over her jutting hips. And then she turns and sashays deliberately into the green water of the lake.

She walks and walks and is soon submerged. She surfaces and shakes out her wet hair, is now facing toward Hilda. She says,

“It’s not cold.”

Hilda opens the car door and steps out. She takes another swig and then places the bottle on the hood of the car. She removes her cardigan. She watches Zelda watch her. It’s the same stare from the front porch but different, too. She removes the rest of her clothing without looking at Zelda. And then she enters the water.

It isn’t cold. It isn’t warm, either. It’s a neutral temperature for a not neutral occurrence. She goes under, holds her breath, keeps her eyes closed. But then she’s surfacing, gasping for air and looking at Zelda.

Zelda laughs and brings her thumb up to Hilda’s nose. The thumb rubs once, twice, and then disappears again in the water.

“You had an oil smudge,” Zelda says.

“Thanks for taking care of it,” Hilda says.

“I’d like to take care of much more besides,” Zelda says. Hilda doesn’t want to read too much into that, so she splashes her and swims off toward a rotting log.

Zelda’s the more athletic swimmer and catches her three quarters of the way there.

It would be innocent frivolity if they weren’t both nude.

But Zelda’s arm is circling Hilda’s waist, and her fingers are biting into Hilda’s hip.

They both freeze.

“What do you miss about me?” Hilda pants.

“Everything,” Zelda pants. 

They’re both so still and silent, the gentle waves of the lake lapping against their naked bodies that are just barely brushing each other underwater. Hilda turns in the weightless surf, looks at Zelda. Hilda’s floating in the water but grounded by Zelda’s arm. They look into each other’s eyes, and Hilda sees all the things that she’d suppressed in herself. She sees all the things she hasn’t allowed herself to see. 

“I miss you, too,” Hilda says.

“Prove it,” Zelda says.

Hilda had known this might be dangerous. But she hadn’t known in exactly what way it might be dangerous.

Hilda props her elbows on the rotting log.

“Come here,” Hilda says, an entity outside herself that she doesn’t comprehend. But Zelda does so anyway. Apparently Zelda comprehends what Hilda cannot.

Zelda’s floating in front of her. She’s nude and swampy.

“I want you,” Hilda finds herself saying.

“Oh thank Lucifer. Didn’t I tell you I was fun?” Zelda says as she closes in to kiss her.

**Author's Note:**

> Together-as-sisters prompt: front porch, denial, skinny-dipping


End file.
